Your reviews seed this roundup. Please send items, including news about recent publications and honors, to NBCCCritics@gmail.com. (Current members only.) Please send links that do not require a subscription or a username and password.
Leading up to our announcement of the NBCC award winners on March 16, 2017, you can check out the “30 Books in 30 Days” series here and at Lit Hub.
Minneapolis Star Tribune books editor (and NBCC board member) Laurie Hertzel writes about the dubious art of decorating with books.
Jonathan Russell Clark reviews essay collections by David Orr, Stanley Elkin, and Betty Fussell for the New York Times Book Review.
Ellen Akins reviews “Autumn,” by Ali Smith, for the Washington Post, and “Lincoln in the Bardo,” by George Saunders, for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
NBCC Board Member Kate Tuttle writes about the NBCC nonfiction finalists for the Los Angeles Times.
Joe Peschel reviews Carlo Rovelli for the News & Observer, and Elan Mastai for the Houston Chronicle.
Heller McAlpin reviews Bill Hayes and Ali Smith for NPR, and Daphne Merkin for the Washington Post.
Chuck Greaves reviews Neil Gaiman's “Norse Mythology” and interviews mystery novelist Anne Hillerman for the Four Corners Free Press.
Dean Rader writes about Robert Motherwell, poetry, and politics for the Los Angeles Review of Books and reviews Dana Levin's “Banana Palace” for the Kenyon Review.
NBCC Board Member Colette Bancroft reviews George Saunders for the Tampa Bay Times.
Jim Ruland reviews Joshua Mohr's memoir, Sirens, and Jade Chang's debut novel, The Wangs vs. the World, for San Diego CityBeat.
NBCC Board Member Jane Ciabattari includes new books by George Saunders, Min Jin Lee, and Daphne Merkin (plus The Handmaid's Tale), in her latest Lithub column.
Alexis Burling reviews “Human Acts” by Han Kang for the San Francisco Chronicle.
NBCC Board Member Kerri Arsenault interviews Jill Schoolman at Archipelago Books for Lithub. Aresenault sold her narrative nonfiction book to Anna DeVries at Picador. USA WHAT REMAINS: A Community, a Paper Mill, An Inheritance, is about a small, working class town in Maine nicknamed “Cancer Valley” that for over 100 years orbited around a paper mill where most townspeople worked, including three generations of her family.
Former NBCC Board Member Rigoberto Gonzalez writes, in the Los Angeles Times, about the value of books in his life after he came to the U.S. with his family from Mexico.